He had only a voice link with his team upstairs, no video. “I got six people wounded here.”
“You got a dozen and a half untouched! Go get the intruders!”
“Why should we rush ’em and take more casualties? They’re not goin’ anywhere. We can wait ’em out.”
“While the fuckin’ house burns down?” the chief yelled.
“Then we’ll burn ’em out!”
The chief thought it over swiftly. Humphries is sealed into his master suite. They can’t get to him. The fire’s triggered the automatic alarms. That upstairs hallway is closed off by airtight doors. Windows are already sealed. Okay. We’ll let the fire do the job.
It was getting smoky in the upstairs hall. Leaning his back against the overturned table Fuchs peered down the hallway and saw flames licking at the carpet, spreading toward them.
“We must get out,” Amarjagal repeated.
The flames reached the drapes on the farthest window. They began smoldering.
Coughing, Sanja added, “It is useless to die here, Captain.”
Fuchs wanted to pound his fists on the floor. Humphries was a few meters away, cowering behind his protective cermet barrier. The coward! Fuchs raged. The sniveling coward. But he’s smarter than I am. He’s prepared for this attack, while I’ve led my people into a stupid assault that will gain us nothing even if we live through it. He pictured Humphries’s smirking face and felt the rage rising inside him even hotter than the flames creeping toward them.
“THE ENTIRE HALLWAY AREA IS SEALED OFF,” the loudspeaker voice declared. “THE FIRE’S GOING TO SUCK ALL THE OXYGEN OUT OF YOUR AIR. YOU HAVE THREE CHOICES: SUFFOCATE, ROAST, OR SURRENDER.”
Sitting cross-legged on his oversized bed, Humphries yelled at the wallscreen image of his security chief, “You’re letting them burn up the second-floor hallway? Do you have any idea of the value of the artwork on those walls? The furniture alone is worth more than your salary!”
The security chief looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Sir, it’s the only way to get them. They’ve wounded six of my people already. No sense getting more of them hurt.”
“That’s what I pay them for!” Humphries raged. “To protect me! To kill that sonofabitch Fuchs! Not to burn my house down!”
Ferrer was sitting on an upholstered chair on the far side of the spacious room, her robe demurely pulled down below her knees.
The security chief was saying, “You’re perfectly safe inside your suite, Mr. Humphries. The walls are concrete and your door is fireproof reinforced cermet.”
“And my hallway’s going up in flames!”
“They started the fire, sir, my people didn’t. And now they either surrender or the fire kills them.”
“While your people sit on their asses.”
Stiffly, the security chief replied, “Yessir, while my people keep the rest of the house secure and wait for the intruders to give themselves up.”
Humphries stared at the chief’s image for a long moment, panting with frustrated rage. Then he snarled, “Don’t look for a bonus at Christmas.”
“We’re trapped here,” Amarjagal said, still as unemotional as a wood carving.
Fuchs saw the flames licking up the window draperies, heard them hissing, edging along the carpeting toward them. But the smoke was no worse than it had been before: annoying, but not suffocating.
“Where’s the smoke going?” he muttered.
“Captain, we must do something,” said Sanja, his voice tense. “We can’t stay here much longer.”
Fuchs scrambled to his feet and took a few steps along the hall. He saw the smoke curling up from the blazing drapes and streaming across the ceiling in a thin, roiling layer. It grew noticeably thinner halfway along the hall.
“Help me,” he called to Sanja as he grabbed a heavy chest of inlaid ebony. The two men wrestled it into the middle of the hall and Fuchs clambered up onto it.
A ventilator, he saw, its grillwork cleverly disguised to look like an ornamental design on the ceiling. It was closed, he realized, but not completely. Some of the smoke was being sucked up through it. He pushed against it with both hands. It gave, but only slightly.
Sanja immediately understood. He took a copper statuette from the nearest table and handed it up to Fuchs, base first. Fuchs pounded at the ventilator grill with the fury of desperation. It dented, buckled. With an animal roar he smashed at it again and the ventilator gave way with a screech of metal against metal. Immediately, the smoke slithering along the ceiling began pouring into the opening.